News outlets are generally graded by their historical reputabilitiy. If you find yourself continuously fact checking it, maybe consider following a better news outlet (even if they publish more “boring” stories that aren’t as “up to date”): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources
I would also love to see a better place for keeping news outlets accountable for their bad publishing actions. Wikipedia does, but it happens on discussion pages and it relies on human editors who know where those discussions happened to string it together
Was about to post this list, it’s a very good overall quick reference. It correctly identifies most of the tabloids posing as “real” newspapers, too.
That is a good recipe for sneaking lies into the newspaper. Journalists should just be doing their job.
Journalists have one job: produce revenue one way or another. Informing the public of factual or fictional events is a byproduct of running this business.
This is a cynical take that would be disputed by the people you are denigrating.
Some definitely do that
Agreed. Imo, if the journalists simply cited their claims, then this question of whether its safe to appeal to authority wouldn’t need to be asked.
It’s a balance to hit in article sharing communities too.
Too much leniency, and you just end up with people posting DMG articles, and tiny un-sourced blogs with snazzy titles.
Too tough, and you end up spending your entire life justifying why various borderline sources are not suitable.DMG articles?
I’m guessing Dungeon Master’s Guide
Yep. Damn Wizards infiltrated the UK commercial media a decade ago, and they never left.
[…] Too much leniency, and you just end up with people posting […] tiny un-sourced blogs with snazzy titles. […]
Imo, in a perfect world, if everyone cited their sources, there would be a perfect chain of sources that leads directly to the original. If one collectively cited source was found to be inaccurate, then, logically, all connected references would be nullified.
[…] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources […]
Thank you for sharing that link! 😊
News outlets are generally graded by their historical reputabilitiy. […]
While that’s good data to have, I think that any claims should be immediately verifiable. I think it’s a disservice to the truth and public discourse to rely on appeals to authority for trust in one’s published news. Imo, an argument is either sound or unsound — an atomic claim is either accurate or inaccurate.
Hard to believe that when I’ve seen many of the “historically reputable” sources on that list flagrantly lying and spreading pro genocide props over the past 13 months
Being pro genocide is an opinion technically. If you have a “flagrant lie”, however, please post it. There was another wanker in the thread who claimed equal grand claims of lies but failed to come up with a link showing an actual lie
I see your sources. I will check Wikipedia to see if there has been discussion on it, if not, I will bring it up and get back to you.
(On phone right now so I can’t)
EDIT: Will not be posting this on Wikipedia, see response in https://lemmy.ml/post/23416718/15472127
Well good. Luck with that, but my experience trying to get changes through on Wikipedia is that it just takes one person with an agenda to stubbornly go “nuh-uh” and there nothing you can do about it
I used to edit Wikipedia for a long time, so I know what you’re saying - but if you’re actually correct, you’ll generally win (may require pinging some other people who know you to come in to mediate)
So I read through this, and unfortunately there’s nothing concrete. Every error has been corrected, and the errors that remain are opinion pieces which can’t be listed as a source on Wikipedia. Due to WP:RECENT, this means no place where Wikipedia refers to the New York Times as a source will be asserting incorrect information.
This probably isn’t the response you want, but that’s the truth about their reporting.
Edit: If you still want to try and bring it up, this is what I had written in my draft:
The following article has been brought to my attention: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537121.2024.2394292#abstract While the issues raised in this paper tend to focus on bias, and factual errors were later corrected in many cases (which should be suffice due to WP:RECENT), the section of "Misquoting Israeli leaders" refers to multiple errors in reporting from the New York Times that remain uncorrected. ~~~~(This is before I noticed the uncorrected parts are Opinion pieces, so I stopped)
You can post it here, but you will probably be shut down for the same reasons I mentioned above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard
LoL. I guess manufacturing consent for wars does absolutely nothing to harm their credibility. This list is dogshit.
The New York Times has been a full-throated government mouthpiece since at least 9/11. At this point, Teen Vogue has more credibility.
This person thinks that Ukraine invaded Russia, FYI.
Yeah, but that doesn’t make them wrong and the NYT
This person thinks that Ukraine invaded Russia, FYI.
[…] that doesn’t make them wrong […]
Nice catch of their strawman 😉
NAFO bot has arrived to defend the military industrial complex with lies. Right on schedule.
I don’t even know what a NAFO is but sure. Everyone but you is a robot. Is reality even real? Do the snozberries taste like snozberries? Are we really breathing or is the air forcing us to live?
Yes, everyone who’s on here defending western imperialism is either a bot or propagandized to hell. Either one is fair to write off.
Beep boop
If you have evidence of them lying, you’re more than welcome to submit that on the discussion pages. I don’t know which articles you’re referring to, but given my historical knowledge of wars in the Middle-East, they likely sourced US mouthpieces or analysts, rather than making the claims themself
LoL. Are people unaware of the NYT’s culpability?
Acting as a stenographer for the state isn’t “journalism.”
He asked for sources and you just act superior and yet didn’t provide sources.
The sources
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_New_York_Times_controversies
Take those with necessary salt and tequila if wanted. One of them is literally “nyt is mean to apartheid musk”
If I tell him the sky is blue, and he asked for a source, am I obligated to provide that as well?
I’m not going to play along with bad faith questioning of common knowledge.
You’ll find “common knowledge” is surprisingly hard to prove when you’re wrong. Wikipedia is a big place, if you can find concrete evidence of NYT lying, you can do a lot of reputational damage to them (even as so far as getting them removed as an acceptable source)
Seeing a lot of bots defend Wikipedia the past couple months. Is that because it’s so easily manipulated by y’all?
If I tell him the sky is blue, and he asked for a source, am I obligated to provide that as well? […]
Imo, while not exactly proper science, a quick source for such a claim could be a simple color photo of the sky.
[…] I’m not going to play along with bad faith questioning of common knowledge.
Leaving aside the “bad faith questioning” component, how would you handle requests for proof of what you are calling “common knowledge” in general?
[…] I would also love to see a better place for keeping news outlets accountable for their bad publishing actions. […]
It’s not immediately clear to me what you mean. Are you referring to increased transparency when a news outlet makes a mistake? Are you referring to legal action? Are you referring to something else?
Just a place where people can call out and crowdsource lies that news outlets publish
What do you mean by “crowdsource” in this context?
I mean, yeah.
Also probably extremely unqualified to be one.
We really should get way more research methodology stuff into school curriculums from much earlier.
Or maybe we require large newspapers and other single owner/large audience influencers to cite sources if they make claims and make them liable if it turns out to be false… because we‘re unable to read our medications instructions or the terms of the products we use.
I‘m not against education. But i would like to hold people who make claims accountable additionally to enabling the public to do research.
Well, that works if the only vector of misinformation is broadcast-based, but it’s not. There are far fewer gatekeepers now than there were last century, you don’t just have to fact check what comes up the traditional media pipe, also social media claims and claims from marginal sources. Both of which look pretty much identical to traditional media in the forms that most people consume them, which is a big part of the issue.
And, of course, anonymous sourcing and source protection still has a place, it’s not as trivial as that.
In any case, there are no silver bullets here. This is the world we live in. We’re in mitigation mode now.
Of course not. My point stands though.
The eu is doing a somewhat decent job pushing for platform liability although I would say we need more and harder measures in that case.
Of course all your points apply too so the skill of fact checking needs to be honed. But keeping potential drivers of misinformation accountable is paramount.
Sure, it’s a hard line to walk against free speech, though.
I am more concerned about access. Reliable, high quality information is increasingly paywalled, while disinformation is very much not. That is a big problem and, again, one with no easy solutions. If people with the skillset and the disposition need to charge to keep their jobs while meme farmss keep pumping out bad faith narratives funded by hostile actors it’s going to be hard to reverse course.
I alsmost wonder if accuntability takes the shape of public funding for information access on outlets meeting certain oversight standards, but that is a very hard sell in a political landscape where some political groups benefit from the current situation.
Yes indeed.
Free speech or freeze peach as I call the populist american approach is no right. It is just a way for people to manipulate the lesser privileged.
The european way of free speech is you are allowed to say whatever you want as long as you harm noone with it. Knowingly spreading lies is the latter. If thats anti free speech to you, then tough luck.
Europe’s approach to free speech (in general, there are tons of countries with different takes) is that it’s a right along with a bunch of others and it gets limitations like all others. I agree, the US view of rights as places where you do whatever you want and everybody else has to deal with the fallout is fundamentally different to the social democracy approach.
But free speech remains a fundamental right for democracy. If you allow governments to have too much control over resources, private speech or news reporting you end up on the other end of the spectrum, where public resources are spent reinforcing the position of whatever the current government is.
This is and has always been one of the hardest balancing acts of healthy democracies, and it’s borderline impossible in a world dominated by for-profit social media and hostile actors deliberately using communication as a weapon.
We have gone far into the fight on principles here.
Yes, free speech
No spreading lies, period.
[…] anonymous sourcing and source protection still has a place […]
I agree. Though, anecdotally, I’m not exactly fond of how some news outlets that I’ve come across use such types of sources — they use some adulterated quote snipped buried within their article; I think it would be better if they, for example, post explicitly the entire unadulterated (within good reason) transcript of the anonymous source with all relevant metadata cited along with it, and then cite that in whatever article.
Yeah, it’s a problematic tool, for sure. In politics in particular it can be used to present interested or partisan information as factual or to manufacture a story. Happens all the time.
That’s why loopholes are loopholes and controlling misinformation is so hard. Perfectly legitimate tools can be used maliciously or unethically and there are very valuable babies in that bathwater that shouldn’t be sacrificed in pursuit of easy solutions.
Well, that works if the only vector of misinformation is broadcast-based, but it’s not. […]
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
I’m saying that holding a news outlet accountable for accuracy could work in a news landscape where people get their information from a handful of outlets that all reach a broad audience. In a world where a lot of people get small pieces of misinformation from thousands or millions of tiny sources spread across social media it is much harder to keep a centralized control on accuracy for all those communications, even discounting all the issues with free speech and opinion.
I’m saying that holding a news outlet accountable for accuracy could work in a news landscape where people get their information from a handful of outlets that all reach a broad audience. In a world where a lot of people get small pieces of misinformation from thousands or millions of tiny sources spread across social media it is much harder to keep a centralized control on accuracy for all those communications
Hm, I do agree that many outlets/sources may make things “messier”, but I don’t think that it would mean that the laws could no longer apply — for example, I think, defamation laws could still apply to anyone.
As I think someone else already pointed out, defamation is not a major part of the issue and it’s already in place quite strictly in many places without making a dent on the issue.
And yes, it’s absolutely defeated by scale. You can’t start a legal process against every single tweet and facebook post (let alone every message in a Whatsapp group you can’t even see in the first place). As with paywalls, the aggregate effect ends up being that large outlets are held to a high standard while misinformation spread through social media is not just cheaper to make but less accountable.
[…] You can’t start a legal process against every single tweet and facebook post (let alone every message in a Whatsapp group you can’t even see in the first place). […]
Imo, theoretically one could, but I think that it would be impractical, or at least prohibitively expensive.
[…] without making a dent on the issue.
“the issue” being misinformation and disinformation that’s not defamation?
With respect, this shows an ignorance of the historical role of journalism in democracy.
to cite sources
Sources may have valuable information to get out, but not be willing to go on the record. Professional journalists are like doctors in that they’ve committed themselves to a code of ethics. As citizens we are called on to trust them to not make sh*t up.
For publicly available written sources, it’s only a bit different. Yes, they could cite every sentence they write, and indeed some do, but it still comes down to institutional trust. If you don’t trust where you’re getting your news from, this is a problem that’s probably not gonna get fixed with citations.
make them liable if it turns out to be false
A terrible no-good idea. Legislating for truth is a slippery slope that ends in authoritarian dystopia. The kind of law you are advocating exists in a ton of countries (“spreading dangerous falsehoods”, abuse of defamation laws when the subject involves an individual, etc). You would not want to live in any of these places.
[…] As citizens we are called on to trust them to not make sh*t up. […]
Imo, that’s an appeal to authority.
Yes, it is. It’s literally how a complex society works. Do you advocate trusting nobody about anything and somehow doing all the research yourself? Would you dismiss your doctor for their “appeal to authority” when they open a medical textbook? This is silly.
[…] Would you dismiss your doctor for their “appeal to authority” when they open a medical textbook? […]
Trusting the doctor’s word simply because they are a doctor would be an appeal to authority; whereas, referencing a medical textbook would be citing a source, and therefore not conjecture.
[…] Do you advocate trusting nobody about anything and somehow doing all the research yourself? […]
It’s more that I think reputation increases the probability that a claim is accurate, but it isn’t proof of accuracy. That being said, even if an entity is trustworthy, I think they still have a responsibility to maintain that trust by being transparent in the claims that they make — I think they shouldn’t ride on the coattails of current public opinion.
